SEA OBT Feedback & Review

With the SEA (Thailand) client currently in a non-wipe open beta (soft launch), I thought it may be important to leave some feedback here for Kakao and players to think about as we may be approaching a North American and European test date. These opinions are my own, and I do not claim to represent the majority of the player base, so please do feel free to leave your own feedback down below as well.

Cash Shop ​

I will start off with the most controversial and focused part of an MMORPG that many western players are afraid of, the cash shop. As of 2019.4.27 the cash shop includes the following types of content. (Here is a list of all the cash shop items + description on a Google Sheet)

To put it simply, thecash shop is looking good. It may look like a bit concerning for those who haven't played the game yet, but it's truly a relaxed and generous cash shop. My cautions and opinions with the cash shop, and concerns I believe players should have:

Pets loot and have stats, similar to BDO. At this moment it does not appear like they are a necessity, but rather a convenience. You do not grind or kill mobs at an intense speed, so you are able to manually loot quite easily so far. This is a great cash shop item that offers convenience for players who want it, and isn't a necessity for those who don't want it. You can purchase 24 hour pets with 15 Reconstruction tokens [In game currency]. So it's very easy to obtain free as well. It should remain this way.

As of right now the Lifeskill Labor Potions do not appear to be a concern, but they have the potential to end up in a scary situation for players. I have not yet experienced the need to constantly keep my labor points up, but if that situation comes and there is no alternative option in the game- this will be an issue. Right now labor points seem to be working more like Black Desert than they do in Archeage, in terms of necessity.Be very careful with this Kakao.

The membership benefits are looking reasonable. The importance of Earth Aura +10% and Market tax fee -30% has yet to be verified, but the rest is a nice buff for those who want it, but not a necessity for those who don't want it. It should remain this way in NA, or altered slightly. Overall, it's looking good like this so far.

A:IR Pass​

There's a really cool system they have in place called an "A:IR PASS". Think of this similar to how battle royale (Ex. Fortnite) season passes work. You purchase the pass, and then have access to about 3 months(?) worth of cosmetics and creative loot such as flaired footsteps, special emotes/clothing, etc..There's a free path with limited rewards, and then the paid pass which gives an abundant amount and obviously more exclusive.

In my opinion, this is the best type of monetization an MMORPG- or any game in general, can have. If this allows them to gain profit without monetizing the game in an unfair (P2W) manor, I believe it's an absolutely great idea, and the first of it's kind in an MMORPG. I'm all for this.

The Targeting System​

As of this moment A:IR uses a free action based camera. It feels smooth and aims well. But, the problems begin to appear in PvP outside of 1v1. There is no option to hard-lock onto a player, so if you are aiming at one player, but another player walks in front, you will no longer be able to target that original player unless you can get a direct view of him. This becomes even more so important when Mystics or future healers need to heal a specific player, but end up getting their skills absorbed by another team-mate who walks in front of them. PvP will not be at it's full potential until this is fixed.

There NEEDS to be some form of hard-lock, and luckily there are a few easy fixes.
1. When a player targets another player, upon pressing TAB it should become a Hard-lock onto that player.
2. Allow target cycling with TAB Target.
3. Allow the option for traditional TAB-Targeting and RMB mouse camera view (Pressing TAB to target various enemies and holding RMB to move the camera around- similar to Archeage/other MMOs).

Combat & Skills
​

General combat feels very smooth and good. It's nothing amazing, flashy, or genre-breaking. It does combat just good, which in my opinion is exactly what the MMORPG market needs right now. Outside of the targeting system I mentioned above, there isn't much to complain about. There is a cool combo system where some skills will have bonus effects when done together, and the animations flow nicely. Switching between stances feels nice as well. Combining various skills from the two stances makes for greater combos.

Skills have add-ons which can change the effects of how they work such as cool-down time reduction, damage increase, move while casting, altering effects, etc..

Overall, the stance swaping and skill add-ons bring more depth to the skill system, and everything just feels enjoyable.

Leveling & Content​

The main form of leveling is through questing, which you will breeze through quite quickly up until level 30. Think of level 30 in A:IR similar to level ~50 in Black Desert. You will unlock your instanced home at level 30 (free), and can then even purchase open world land (1400 OW houses per realm). At level 33 you will unlock PvP battlegrounds, and once you hit level 34 you can start crossing into the enemy faction's map to continue leveling. Once you hit level 35 you can begin doing 3-player party dungeons as well. The current max level is 45, although according to various sources level 45 is the soft cap, and you can continue leveling afterwards slowly, similar to how BDO's leveling works. The highest level in game right now, after 3 days of launch, is level 40- so we have yet to confirm this ourselves.

Overall leveling is a bit of a grind, but for those who have played Black Desert it's easier. For those who haven't played games similar to Black Desert, it may be a bit grindy for you, but I don't believe it's intolerable. MMORPGs aren't meant to be complete within the first couple of days either way!

Miscellaneous Opinions & Feedback​

Mounted air combat is much better than expected. Skills and animations flow nicely, and it doesn't feel awkward.

As Kakao should know from experience on Black Desert already, servers are important. Please do not go cheap on this. The SEA client is currently experiencing a rough start in terms of server stability, and we have been limited time to play the game (5am est - 1pm EST), until they resolve the issue. This is partly due to the foreign player rush on their servers, but this should not be unexpected for A:IR in NA & EU.

PvP is great outside of the targeting problem mentioned above, it's the closest PvP game to Archeage I've played.

The world feels quite bare and textures are blurry in quite a few areas. The graphics aren't bad for MMORPG standards, but they are lacking in comparison to the new standard set by Black Desert.

Optimization is pretty good, and only gets bad when the server starts to experience overloading. Overall pretty consistent FPS and quality for an Unreal Engine 3 MMORPG.

My rig is a decent mid-game rig with 1060 6 gig graphics card, 32 gig ram and i5 processor. The weak point is my processor.
I actually have quite big problems from time to time.
I get alot of stuttering, small freeze laggs and overall most times low fps.

Sometimes in some places it runs good, But then I move away a bit and We are back to the FPS issues.

I just hit level 30 so i dont know if its because so Many players and stuff are at the starting area But its annoying.

I also set My settings to the lowest possible, wierd thing is the FPS issues doesnt matter if its the lowest settings or even is medium or High. I get the same outcome.

Performance: I have a GTX970, 8GB RAM and an i5.4690K, running in Windows 10, nothing overclocked. Most of the settings are high, with useless crap like motion blur, bloom and such off. In instanced areas I get smooth 60FPS, when there's a lot of people around doing **** I go down to high20s-low30s. And the game is HOGGING all it can. CPU doesn't go down from 80%, GPU from 90%, RAM is as good as gone. Playable even in crowded areas, but it could improve a lot, specially when I have the graphics card listed as recommended

Graphics: They feel... weird, for lack of a better word. They go the realistic route, without having the textures, models or lighting to go with it. The result is a weird mess in which things look worse than they are on the first look. And then there's this weird ugly smog covering every inch of the map, making it all look even worse.

UI: It's a clusterfuck. Low res as hell, and I'm just playing in 1080p, I dread looking at that game in 1440p, like I suffered going back to TERA in 1080p. It has different buttons for achievements, login rewards, the season pass crap, cash shop and premium currency, but the dungeon menu is bundled in the map or in the escape menu. And menu hotkeys suck, at least with my Spanish keyboard.

Gameplay:

Seems fun, but I only got to lvl 25 so I need more time to test it.

Warlord skills flow nicely, and have an oomph to them I'm really liking.

Cooldowns are long. Several seconds long. Having few skills at low level makes this very noticeable, but less as I unlock skills.

I do a good chunk of damage in DPS mode, and more than I expected on tank mode, but have lots of nice CC, expect to be pushed around like a doll on big PvP.

There's no active way of building up aggro that I've seen, but I haven't unlocked all skills and they aren't too well translated with the community patch, so I guess aggro generation depends on gear.

Mystic does a lot of damage too, so I guess no one will have problem to grind solo.

Mounts are Items. You don't unlock them on a separate window or anything, they are just items you need to have in your inventory. And being mount stamina drained while summoned and recharged with time/potions, I guess you will have to carry several on you. But the stamina takes a good while to go down, probably noticeable only when you want to spend a long time airborne, not for travel.

You have flying and non-flying mounts. Non-flying ones are faster, but you can't fight on them, so they are probably just for traveling.

Artifacts are a bit confusing right now, but can be a good thing for build variety. You slot a limited number on artifact, different for each stance, each artifact affecting a different skill, giving it different effects. You can level up these artifacts, increasing their effect, and upgrade them to a different tier, unlocking even more effects and increasing their cost, but with no metrics of what the cost cap is, how hard upgrading them is, and how will p2w affect them, I can't say if they are good or a p2w money sink.

The soft-targeting system seems to work really well, at least as a pure melee class. But there's a problem when you want to target someone in the back. I expect to spend a lot of effort in PvP trying to obstruct line of sight between the enemy and my squishy allies.

Cash shop. Smells bad, can be not as bad as it seems if Kakao wants to.

Energy potions are a big red flag, but haven't reached gathering/crafting yet, so I don't know how broken they are. But with progression locked behind crafting, this can be a big red flag. If you time progression behind an energy system, and you give people a way to pay to simply ignore that timing, whales will be able to max out day 1, and that's no fun for anyone. Either remove them, or greatly limit their usage. Something like "You can use energy potions to restore energy up to 50% your daily energy natural recovery" can be more than enough and still give a more than healthy profit.

Optional paid subscription seems fair. Market fee being the biggest impact, you'll probably need one if you want to make big bucks, but won't be necessary for a lot of people. Maybe inventory and storage get more important later, but I have more than enough right now so I can't give my opinion yet.

Pets. Oh, pets. I had BDO flashbacks, but it seems you don't really need them (too much). Used one of the temporary pets they gave me while questing, and it could gather all the drops I got without problems. With the amount of mobs killed and items dropped, I don't see being loaded with them becoming a necessity to keep up with loot. The buffs they give, on the other hand, can be a definitive factor on how P2W they are. We need a list of them to make sure.

Very well written post. I have yet to gain access to the game, but according to your feedback as someone with no A:IR experience, I get a clear picture of what to expect.

The Memberships are pretty much the same as Value Packs in BDO, which are completely optional. I play most of the time without Value Packs just fine and only use them when I know I will have a week/month to play more actively than I normally do.

The Market Tax Fee reduction can be controversial, because people can consider it as an P2W advantage because players with memberships will make more money from the items they sell, but that is subject to perception. It makes a difference if you sell on a large scale and move hundreds of units per day, but if there is a limit on how many items you can sell at a time, the advantage is barely noticable.

Pet stats and buffs should be kept in check, as well as future expansions that might encourage/require the use of Labor. If it becomes a requirement like in ArcheAge, Labor Potions become a problem. If they are only used so you can gather a few more weeds and make a few more potions per day, than that's fine, but it the majority of wealth generating systems are bound to Labor, Labor Potions should not exist as they indirectly create wealth.

I read other people complain about Repair Hammers, but what I could read about the Repair System it also seems quite similar to BDO: Durability and Max Durability, in which Max Durability determines how far you can repair your durability.
If Max Durability is decreased through upgrading or refining, then there must be an in-game way to replenish that max durability same as with Memory Fragments in BDO.
Now, if Repair Hammers are equivalent to Memory Fragments and they are sold in the cash shop, I can see why people are angry over this. However, if my assumption is correct, all Repair Hammers do is allowing you to enchant/refine more frequently.
Is that P2W? No, it is not. Lottery Tickets do not P2W real life just because someone has access to more tickets than the ordinaly person. There is still a high chance that you will get nothing out of them.

As someone who has a dedicated playstyle like myself (and I'm sure people who have the same playstyle share or resemble the same thoughts as I do), I have been speaking about my opinions on how to make this game more preferable to the audience of the MMORPG genre and to the people who are dedicated to playing an MMORPG, .... and what happened? It feels to me that you don't give a f*** about my opinions as a Potential Customer and you want to design the game how you wanted without factoring or considering our demands! Just exactly who are your Target Audience here? Everyone? Do you even know what a "Market Segmentation" is? It's not possible to appeal to and capture the broad Consumer Market! A "Target Market" is a "segment"! If you want larger Market Shares, you offer the Market various Products that each appeal to their own Target Audience! Look at Krafton Game Union -- do they not have PUBG already which is a Battle Royale?

This is supposed to be an "MMORPG" which is a genre -- isn't that a "segment" of it's own? So why are you trying to go against the basic characteristic design of this genre and disappoint us like all "Modern MMORPGs" you Developers redesigned yourselves? Is there a single "good" Modern MMORPG? Ask youself! -- we despise all of them! And look what you are doing? You are designing your game the exact same way!

The Monetization is an additional concern for me -- my initial concern has always been the game-design! As a dedicated and Hardcore Player, I refuse to play an MMORPG that is flawed in either aspect!

Let's first talk about the game-design:

What's up with the Loot System? Why is it Pure Random Loot System for everyone? This Loot System is the worse that I have ever tried in any MMORPG! It is so Single-player!

How come all Equipments in this game are Character-Bound when Equipped? And how come there is no mechanics in the game to unbound Character-Bounded Equipments? This is a terrible system! Change it! and if you won't or can't, atleast add a mechanics to be able to unbound Character-Bounded Equipments!

How can you give us an MMORPG with no direct Player-to-Player Trading and only an Auction House with 35% Tax from all Sales Income? If you are not willing to give us a direct Player-to-Player Trading System, then remove the Tax from the Auction House so this won't seem that bad!I suggest that you look at these Threads as well, as I have no intention of repeating myself:https://forum.airthegame.com/index.php?threads/discuss-the-economy-of-a-ir.12531/

What kind of crack did you smoke to add a Check-In mechanics to this game with Daily Check-In and Duration Online Rewards? You wanna Reward people for just Logging-in and staying online? Did you know that with the existence of this mechanics, you are forced to Log-in everyday and stay online for certain duration? What's worse is the Daily Check-In Rewards have Tiers and the Tiers can only be increased by your Daily Log-in streak (if you break that streak by not Logging-in, you start at Tier 1 again). Stop Rewarding people for just Logging-in and staying online -- it's Instant Gratification!

My problem with the Combat is the mechanics of it! All Skills in this game have SP requirements, while at the same time, you added long Cooldowns to most of the Skills (even to the ones that don't require CP). Having an SP System already, you don't need to add Cooldowns to the Skills! (in my opinion, only the ones that require CP should have it)

On the early Korean build of this game, you cannot cast certain Skills when you don't have enough SP. What you can cast are what your current SP can provide and the Skills have varying amount of SP requirement. So if you want to cast a certain Skill and that certain Skill requires a lot of SP, you will not waste your SP on other Skills, and instead you will wait for your SP to recover. While you wait, you pay attention to your position in the environment (you have to re-position yourself to dodge attacks). This is good when the Combat allows you to do that instead of just spamming Rotations! With this Combat, it allows you to think about 2 things: your position in the environment, and your current SP and what Skills you can cast with it at that given moment (it's either you cast what you can cast now, or you wait so you can cast something later that requires more SP).

And then you added the Cooldowns (and in this Thai version, they are even longer)! With the Cooldowns (and it's longer in the Thai version) and an SP system co-existing, the game will force you to switch Stance! You will run out of Skills because of the SP and Cooldowns, so you will switch Stance where the Skills there are not in Cooldowns (you just have to meet the SP requirement). And then you added the Combo System on top of this which is a bad mechanics for an MMO! And the f***ing Assassin has a Stack System on Assassination (Melee) Stance making them a more complicated Class on top of an already complicated Combat.

In my opinion, you f***ed up the Combat by making it unnecessarily more complicated!
It's more restricted, Rhythmic, and complicated than the early Korean build!

I can't put up with this Combat -- it's as bad as the NA/EU Steam version of Bless! What the f*** do you think this is? A music game for people with ADHD?

The Combat in Bless JP is better than the Combat in NA/EU Steam version of Bless! The Combat in the early Korean build is better than the Combat in the Thai version!

Do you think that by complicating the Combat to something as stupid as the Thai version and Steam version of Bless, you are making a better Combat? I'm sorry to say this, but you made the Combat worse!

Also, why did you changed the Lock-on Tab-targeting from the Korean version to Free-Aim Tab-targeting? What's your reason? Trying to appease to the dumb masses? I see nothing wrong with Lock-on Tab-targeting and Tab-targeting, and the most populated MMOs have them! I don't like that you changed it to Free-Aim just so you can appease to the retarded masses! You have no principle, just greed!

It does combat just good, which in my opinion is exactly what the MMORPG market needs right now.

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I disagree, and I think it's not what the Market needs but a disgrace to the Market! Everything in your comment is about White Knighting the game! Look at the Combat of Archeage -- a minimum of that for Tab-targeting is what the Market needs! The Combat needs rework -- don't tell me it doesn't!

Then we have the Cash Shop:

Regular Recurring:

The Premium has been split to multiple Premiums instead of making a single one. We have the 30 day Star Blessing Package (an Account Premium), a Premium Estate, a 60 day Premium Airpass, Reconstruction Tickets (7 and 30 days), and Premium Estate 100% off Tax. All of these are recurring Premiums to me! Why can't you unify all these Premiums into 1 single monthly Premium at a reasonable price? I'm a Hardcore so it's not an option for me to not go Premium on monthly basis. Look at all these things I have to mandatorily pay for and more expensively because you split them up! No Hardcore will just pay for a single of these Premiums and not get the rest! That's the reason you are willing to pay the recurring Premium -- to access "all" the Bonuses and Contents! If you cannot access the rest, you are playing the game uncompetitively! Ofcourse you have to buy all -- that's the point!

One-off:

Convenience:

Why are you selling Storage Expansions in the Cash Shop when the Storage Workshop is one of your Estate Progression? You are supposed to work on Upgrading your Storage Workshop in your Estate increasing it's Storage Slots! I perceive this as Pay to Win! You shouldn't be able to buy Storage Slots from the Cash Shop!
I can accept Inventory Expansions as just Convenience, but Storage Slots which is an Estate Progression? I refuse to have this!

Irregular:

Consumables:

And seriously, you are selling Metal Engineering Descriptions, Masterhorns, and Vitality Potions? This is what's pissing me off! Remove these 3 Items and let the people work for them in the game! These 3 things are Pay to Win and I refuse to have these!

Aside from these, everything in the Thai version are tolerable but what you need to spend overall is expensive! As a competitive Player myself, I look at things that I need to pay for one-time and recurringly in order to compete in this Free to Play MMO (a Business Model that I really hate)! I know what I need in this Cash Shop and I already have an idea how much will my total one-time and recurring Expenses be in Rubies. This is an expensive Cash Shop! If you are not providing a proper game-design and Monetization (something that can affect the gameplay), you will only be wasting my money! Change this Cash Shop by making it less expensive, unify all the Premiums, and remove the Pay to Win!

I hope you understand that Kakao Games is the publisher and they have no influence to change the direction of the game. They can forward ideas based on our feedback to Bluehole, but in the end it is Blueholes decision whether said ideas will be accepted and implemented or declined.

Furthermore, Bluehole is currently focusing on launching the TH version, so they surely do not have any resources to spare on adjusting the game for a market which does not even have a release date.

Yeah, indeed, but sometimes this is really difficult to put many informations in the one simple sentence. But yeah, I agree with you.

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They are asking for constructive feedback! What constructive feedback can you provide from lack of details? Look at the OP's and @Santreim's comments and tell me about their length -- aren't they about the same length? Just because I'm complaining and the two are sugarcoating the game (also including @FliP), doesn't mean that I'm providing useless feedback of wall of text.

Please, do not cross. We are here especially NOT to argue with each other (sorry for my bad English). I have read some of your posta and I am proud that we have some real wise people right here. Instead of getting nervous let's give a good example for the other MMORPG's forums. Keep doing a good work and good luck

Disclaimer
This feedback is based on my opinion and experience with the game. It’s supposed to be a first look feedback and review based on two or three days of playtime in the Thailand Beta of A:IR.

Character Creation
I’ll keep it short because I don’t have too much to say about it. I think it’s decent, there’s a fair amount of customization options in the game, however it could be much more extensive. Things that irked me was stuff like not enough hairstyles to choose from, same about the colors, especially for the eyes. And it felt weird that only Orcs were able to have full beards, and only elves could have more glowing kind of eyes. Tattoo colors could not be adjusted either. Definitely room for improvement but it’s alright and gets the job done.

Game Introduction
I was very disappointed to find out that the entire introductory section to the game, the starting area and the whole starting experience has been drastically changed in the Thailand version. This part is probably best explained in videos, showing the differences. First, here is a video of the intro experience we had back in the first Korean CBT:

I really loved this first introduction into the game here in Korea. The idea was special and somewhat unique, it really stuck with me and it made more sense than the current one to me. Now, in comparision, here is the current Game Introduction in Thailand:

In the current starting area we start off with a cutscene of us literally falling out of the sky. Now, alright, I don’t understand Thai, so there might and there probably is some backstory for this, but just as a whole, it feels weird and disjointed for this to be the first thing I get to see or experience in the game. We start off on the Inventus ship which is basically a giant flying city. Which at first sounds great, but there is so much happening everywhere over there that I think it is severely limiting one’s FPS. You talk to some NPC’s, get a quick combat and gliding introduction and get sent off to do quests. Seems very standard and generic… while it’s good that they introduce us to the game systems, it feels way too limiting and bland to me. Not special at all, or unique, like the KR introduction; and it’s less visually pleasing as well. From there on, til about level 30, it’s just flying from A to B, doing a ton of quests and being sent off from one instance to another, it’s so disjointed and confusing and the world doesn’t feel open at all which is very disappoiting. Only after the initial storyline of the inventus is completed, at about level 30, does the game start opening up a bit more. And while it doesn’t take a lot of time to reach that level, it feels so bland and generic. You got to keep in mind that this will be literally the first time players step into the game, this will be their very first impression of the game, and if that’s boring and bland, then why would they keep playing? At this point you probably realize I prefer the KR intro to the TH one and I would love to see it back. Please.

Combat
Alright, I’ll be the first one to say it. I don’t like the new “action” combat knock-off they have going in the SEA version. It feels a little cheap, and while combat still feels very smooth and flows well, I just think a good type of tab-target combat would have fit better. There “action” combat feels a bit hastily made and as such there’s still a few minor problems with it, such as the game automatically choosing a target for you depending on where you move your crosshair. You cannot focus targets this way at all, which oftentimes feels quite annoying.

But overall I must say, the combat feels very well done. It feels smooth and responsive. Unless of course you have high ping or there’s a lot of server traffic, which there was plenty of the first few days, but that’s to be expected.

Skills
While begining at level 8 you are able to switch between two stances with different skills, I still think the classes would benefit from getting even more skills to unlock. There is only a handful of skills, your last skill comes at level 36, while the current maximum level seems to be around level 45. Sometimes skills remain the same, no matter what stance you are in as well. There are times where I find myself just waiting for cooldowns because it feels like there is only very few skills to really use.

____

Will update. More criticism, the features I don't mention atm were awesome.

They are asking for constructive feedback! What constructive feedback can you provide from lack of details? Look at the OP's and @Santreim's comments and tell me about their length -- aren't they about the same length? Just because I'm complaining and the two are sugarcoating the game (also including @FliP), doesn't mean that I'm providing useless feedback of wall of text.

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You're entitled to your own opinion, but don't insult me by disregarding mine as a sugar coat. I simply don't think the same way as you, now that's me sugar coating. Let's remain on topic within this thread. If irrelevant arguments continue I will ask assistance from a moderator to remove this thread from pinned and to close replies up. This thread was kindly pinned by one of our CMs, so let's try and act with a bit of maturity, shall we?

Hey there Ascendants, thanks for the awesome feedback! I'm going to sticky this thread, so feel free to keep the constructive feedback coming!

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Thank you for pinning this thread up! I hope Kakao finds some useful feedback within this thread to assist with the NA launch. Please do keep an eye on this thread when you can and delete posts that you deem off topic or derailing.

Well, I guess since people who actually played the beta are done with their feedback, it's time for those who merely watched the newest streams to share some opinions and impressions.
I haven't watched too many videos, so here are some very general impressions.

Positives:

- Air ships' flight model got changed for the better IMO, there is much more movement and maneuvering involved and the air mobs are showing some variety in attack patterns, posing somewhat of a challenge and offering a bit of variety in combat experience.

- Seamless transition between flying through skies and jumping all the way down back to the grounds is pretty great IMO. It also feels and looks great when the ships fly up, break through the clouds and then find themselves in a wide open space and the blue sky above them. Really nice.

- I'm okay with the changes to the starting story. I thought that it was a funny idea to originally start out as a kid and then to "grow up" and that the reincarnation story plot could have offered some interesting implications/possibilities for the character creator but
a) having played Tera before, I think it is not a good idea to give weirdos from there actual in-game kids to play,
b) when you have spent some time creating a character and find yourself playing one with entirely different appearence for the first haf an hour or even longer, it's annoying and makes initial rerolling for visual purposes way harder, creating unnecessary frustrations at the most critical moment of the game in terms of player retention and
c) my impression is that the new start exposes you to the skies and A:IR's differentiating trait - flying - better than the old one.

- The story at the beginning of the game seems fairly intriguing and well told which is really bizzare for an asian/korean MMO. Maybe I am under a wrong impression, though.

- player homes on floating isles are there

- Gunner looks pretty stylish, shows off all of the weapons on the character in a proper and natural way.

- Elves

Negatives:

- Elementalist's skill animations and gameplay are still a GRANDIOUS letdown. This is something that maybe would be okay 10-15 years ago, but not today.
Just in terms of spell and casting visuals, compare A:IR's "mage" to this mobile game's one at 8:50, 16:25 and 20:40 marks:

Absolutely nothing has changed since I made a thread about these issues more than a year ago. There are only 5 classes in this game, none are overly original(I even saw an uncannily similar gunner gameplay in a random video about some mobile game) and one of them(1 out of 5, 20%) is just so completely disappointing.

In general, looking at other classes, it feels like there weren't any ideas left for the Elementaist after everyone else got some cool stuff. Or because of steampunk setting no one on the team cares about a magical class. If there is an issue with the skill animations and mounted combat then choosing a staff for a weapon was not only a design and artistic failure, showing a distinct lack of imagination, but also a technical one.

- There is a distinct whiff of p2w:
instant resurrection scrolls(working in pvp, I guess, eh?), xp replenishment scrolls and xp loss after death,
some wonky sounding enchantment helpers,
the way how the endgame seems to feature grindy playstyle focused on non-consensual PvP, but also requires to play the enchantment lottery to keep up(with randomized stats, too, right?).

This is just like a modern Tale of the Scorpion and the Frog. After Tera and BDO we should not expect much, I guess. If there isn't a subscription model with about 15€ monthly payment removing ALL of the p2w f2p BS, you won't get money from me at all.

- Some areas are basically mono-coloured: everything is either grey, brown or greenish-gray. This was already somewhat of an issue in Tera because of the some kind of a graphical filter being used on the one hand and generally lazily chosen colour scheme with terrible, harsh lighting on the other. I've read similar much less nicely expressed complaints from russian players - both about the colour scheme and the steampunk setting.
The game in general needs some colour sprinkled here and there.

- Clouds seem to be either largerly flat or you find yoursef in some sort of a nebula. I haven't seen nice, fluffy "3D" clouds so far.
- In general, I find that there is much creative potential being wasted when it comes to skies and cloud design. Have some pictures:

Mountains and valleys in the skies.

"3D clouds"

This game's central part is the flying through the skies and these really need to offer some fantastic, absolutely spectacular views. I would even go so far as to say that being in the skies shoud feel like being in a completely another world compared to what happens on the ground.

I waited quite some time for a right moment to post the following video:

I think it fits in here and can be a good inspiration source for sky and ship design.

There also should be situations, where two ships could be flying near the same cloud at opposing sides of it and woudn't be able to see each other, resulting in some surprises and tactical considerations.

- Just a personal opinion: Assassin class may have flashy abilities but I really don't feel it. To me most of it is just some flailing around randomly with random objects appearing here and there. I think this class may IMMENSELY profit of a cool looking ability that is a mix of a modernized visual effect of WoW rogue's cold blood(in Classic) and the Mortal/Deadly blow of Lineage 2's assassin classes.

- I find the regular mounts not overly exciting. They do their part in enabling air combat, but that's it basically. They look fairly small, too. Going Aion route would be better if we could instead get animal battle mounts as a counterpart to flying ships, as I described on the exampe of Badass Battle Dragons.
Athough special powerful flying combat mounts working similar to Aion's pvp transformations could be a way, too.

Some badass visuals:

- Very agressive culling of details, objects etc at very short ranges at all times during regular gameplay points to performance issues for large battle scenarios

With new hardware coming out soon, I hoped for something like this being possible in this game:

Given I play on 4K Max Settings (because resolution and graphic settings do not seem to impact performance at all or very little if your goal is to play at 60 FPS), but after about 5-10 minutes into the game, my FPS is cut in half from constant 60 to about 25-30 FPS and it keeps decreasing until about 15-20 FPS.

It is still playable, but a huge handicap in aerial combat and crowded situations like the PvE Arena.

My system has 16 GB of memory and not all of it is used, but I noticed quite a few streamers with higher RAM do not have said issues. I ordered a new 16GB stick to check if overkilling your memory resolves said issue. However, this is something that has to be addressed by the developers.

Performance:
Im Impressed for an UnrealEngine3 Game to have such a decent performance, the only issues I've encountered are Render Issues. If you run into long Loading Screens, do make sure that this Game is on a SSD. Otherwise im mostly between 50-60 FPS on Medium Settings with a fairly old Gaming Rig (i7 4790k, GTX 970, 16 Gigs DDR3 1600).

Gameplay:
I've playing in Assassin like I always do, and I must say im happy how the Ranged Stance is done, but im quite unhappy with the fact that most of the Animations lock you into place, the last CP Skill on the Ranged Stance is quite useless for PvP as enemies can just walk sideways and dodge it way to easily, also I wish for less cooldowns on the AoE focused abilities. Overall the class is quite squishy and for the squishyness doesnt deal enough dmg to compensate, the Gunslinger has more mobility, deals more damage, levels up quicker due to better AoE abilities and will probably be my go-to for EU.

Cash Shop:
So far the Cash Shop appears to be fine, however I dislike the Lootpet System, you shouldnt be forced to buy multiple Lootpets just to unlock various Passives on them, my Idea for a solution would be: Implement a second Cheaper Item to unlock the Passives like let's say a Lootpet cost $15 in make the unlock Item come in different quantitys from 1 for $10 up to 3 for 25$.
I also think the Premium Buff should be adjusted, personally I would like to see a higher EXP Bonus, removed Drop Rate Bonus, a higher Offline Vitality Regen.

Dungeons and Scaling:
Dungeons right now feel particually unrewarding, to a point where I dont wanna waste even 5 minutes inside them for some Rune Scrolls, or a Chest Containing an Automaton, you should not feel rewarded everytime that would make things too easy, but being the Person who gets 20 times in a row not even a Single Green Item lets you think twice if you really wanna continue playing.
You could make this go away by adding Crafting Materials as reward instead of Rune Scrolls and Automaton Chests, and im not talking this one single Crafting Item that you craft Max Durability Repair Hammers with, im talking about the Green/Blue Armor and Weapon Cubes.
The Scaling outside of Dungeons feels odd, dont know if thats particular a problem being a squishy melee class tho, but the mobs at 40+ gain so much Health / Damage per Level that my personal scaling feels weak compared.

Premium Housing and Channels:
I'd love the Premium Housing System, however it's has it downsides, the game is forced to have multiple Channels which makes avoiding Open World PvP far to easy I personally would also suggest one change: Add a Level Requirement or the Requirement to have finished the Secure Base quest chain at the Area you want to buy your House in, otherwise people just rush Lv 30, 100-120k Gold and fly over and buy a House in a Lv 45 Area.
Also maybe add a third Housing Option thats inbetween both, like Premium Instanced Housing.

Airship PvP:
I freaking love It, its been fun destroying enemy Airships but theres been a Problem I've know encountered multiple times which destroys the whole point of it, people jumping the Ship and unsummon it or even using Emergency Escape, those should not be possible if you get attacked. There shouldnt be safe-zones either. Fix that please.

Overall I would give A:IR a solid 8/10, I'd like to see new Classes, new rewarding Dungeons, a lot of Battlegrounds like 15v15 CtF; 50v50 Castle Sieges; Guild vs Guild Airship Battles, maybe even a huge Guild Airship with Cannons and stuff at some point, the possibilites are limited by your imagination.

Addressing and giving my opinions and providing a little insight as I go down your list.

The pets they give you do not provide any sort of combat advantage. They give certain skills like pet stamina increase, gathering mastery increase, etc. Also, the pets loot 10x faster than pets in BDO. 1 pet has been more than enough to loot everything I aoe grind.

Labor (vitality) potions are in a perfectly balanced spot right now. Hardcore lifeskillers will run out of them as per usual. Casuals will have too many. Otherwise, like everything else in the cash shop, surprisingly, A:IR gives you plenty of ways to obtain them. You can purchase 3x 20 Vit potions a day from delivery vendor in your house. You get 1 for free from daily log in. You can obtain 1 from completing your daily reconstruction tiers. There are also a few other ways as well. Another one being treasure maps dropping them.

The premium buffs are nice. Not really needed, but certainly convenient. The game has so many items, and trust me, unless you're able to p2w like 10 rows of inventory space, every single slot will be used and the 16 it gives you in both inventory and bank are precious.

-- Battlepass

It's a great and unique idea. I can't say I've seen it done in MMO's before. It also provides just enough cash shop currency to players to allow them to get a few things with some decent grinding. Been playing for 2 weeks now and I'm just broaching the last tier that rewards 45k rubies, which is essentially a free premium pet or 30 days membership. I definitely dig the rewards and the pacing at which you obtain them.

-- Targeting System

I never understood the stigma around tab targeting. I know MMO's have evolved over the years, and action combat is great and all. But tab targeting always has it's place. It's not a bad system by any means. You hit all the right points with this. There needs to be tab targeting in the game, or an ability to swap between targets. I've done a lot of battlegrounds / PVP world quests now and I have an enemy targeted, press my leap and end up leaping to a mob that's not even on my screen.

Healers have it even worse. It's a lot better with lower ping. Snap healing and whatnot. But still, if you're trying to do gvg or rvr, it's going to be impossible to realistically have any sort of impressive coordination, especially for healers. Targeting needs massive improvement.

-- Combat

The combat in this game is actually very nice. The targeting brings it down a few notches, but I'll be damned if the skills aren't pretty to look at. You have a ton of skills to use, they are further augmented by your artifacts, some of which can completely change the dynamic of your skills. This leaves lots of room to actually change your build drastically from other players.

Certain skills and artifacts are better, and there will be cookie cutter builds, but there's also plenty of room to actually be different.

Well, after two weeks or so of beta testing, I'd like to provide some feedback as well. This post reflects only my opinion, other's may very well differ. Also I am quite aware that the game is one month from release in the SEA region and things are pretty much set in stone, still I would like to provide some ideas for a possible later update or the EU/NA version. Will they be heard? Probably not. Still, here we go.

Character Creation

It's decent enough to make a unique character but if you are expecting anything near a BDO level of customization you will be disappointed. There are way too few sliders and while some of them operate very weird in the extreme settings, others don't do enough for you. The weighting for some bones seems also off and the selection of colors for hair and eyes are a little bit lackluster. Also it's worth noting that if you delete a character that name is gone forever. So reserving an alt name and redoing the looks later is not an option, this should definitely be fixed in my opinion.

Rating: 7 out of 10 waifus

Combat System

I never really liked a combat system that featured weapon swap except in Guild Wars 2. I can only speak for the Assassin class but while I like the idea that we get two separate tactics for different situations (melee combat and range), the problem is that the cooldowns are way to long to actually stay in one stance. It usually comes down to performing one rotation, then swapping to the other stance and doing your rotation here, then swapping back again. Rinse and repeat. This might be a ping issue but swapping tactics doesn't feel seamless, fighting in melee stance and swapping for a restraint, then instantly go back for instance has too much of a delay. I would have liked it a lot better here if you would press an additional key for the skills on your second bar (ctrl + 1 for example) instead of having to press tab, wait for the flashy swap tactics animation and going through a perceived one second internal cooldown to switch back again. Also some weird design choices have been made, so in the case of the Assassin your gap closer/back flip skill (depending on the tactics) is also your stun break. Two separate skills would have made more sense here in my opinion, I might want to stun break but not necessarily change my position or I want to change my position, but maybe in a direction I chose and not depending on the tactics I am in. The skill could work in conjunction with the direction key you are pressing (skill + w: stun break and charge, skill + s: stun break and back flip, skill only: just stun break) which would have made way more sense in my opinion. Overall I like the flashy animations although the skills don't seem to easily flow into each other and are sometimes difficult to connect, especially when airborne. Could be also a ping issue though.

Rating: 6 out of 10 backstabs

Questing and Levelling

While this is the first game where I find daylies somewhat enjoyable, it also demands a lot from you. The whole game loop is basically a huge time management game where you trying to make the most of your play time. Start with a little gathering when your vitality has refreshed over night, then fit your dungeon entries between various world quests. Deliver your crafting requests when you find the time. Go back to the open world and do RvR daylies and unlock an area or two. Try to finish reconstruction quests as you do all of this. This is all great but I would have liked it a lot better if the game wasn't so limiting in many ways. World quests for example, you gain one coin every hour and they stack up to five (maybe more or less, depending on the achievements you have earned - not totally sure how that works) and also you gain tickets for more world quests via login rewards, achievements and reconstruction quests. If you don't use your tickets they will soon pile up and probably go to waste. In my opinion this is an unnecessary mechanic and it would be way more enjoyable if you would have the freedom to do world quests when ever you want. Another idea for making use of piled up tickets would be that you could either disassemble them for a small amount of tokens or exchange them for dungeon entries. The same goes for the vitality system. I agree, the potions are perfectly balanced. Resources are not so much of a limiting factor for crafting gear, more so are the fricking drop items. For your delivery quests and buff food the vitality you gain is more than enough but then again, why limit it in the first place? It somewhat feels unnecessary to me. And why would vitality refill at a decent rate only when you are online? You shouldn't force people to stay logged in after they have finished their daylie chores or at least add the same refill rate as a perk to the star blessing.

Rating: 6 out of 10 various tokens

Crafting and Housing

The housing itself is great, I really love the decoration mode although I could use a snap mode for the inside of the house as well. I appreciate that you can easily craft tons of furniture and don't have to spend real money to have nice things like in BDO. The crafting itself is a little basic but interesting enough to sink some time into. I like the fact that you don't have to specialize and you are able to raise every profession to the max. What I don't like is that you can only craft items for your class but on the other hand, this game is the most alt unfriendly design I have ever seen in an MMO anyway. What makes the housing and gameplay in general a little weird are the five designated channels the game offers. While I understand the fact that channels are needed, unlike in other games the developers or publishers can't add or remove channels on demand. Finding a house is also outright silly, you have to fly around, swap through the channels and wait for a two minute cooldown to do so. A housing NPC that would show you vacant houses on the map and teleport you to the location and channel would be greatly appreciated. A system like this could also be used to easily move to a different spot or channel and reserve or bid on houses in case of a possible server merge.

Rating: 7 out of 10 sandboxes

Graphics and Optimization

This is gonna be a short one. As most of the people have already mentioned, for a Unreal Engine 3 game the optimization is hands down impressive. Except some UI lags I get 60 FPS pretty much all the time, if you are suspecting a train wreck like Bless, be relieved! This game looks stunning and runs very smoothly. Well done!

Rating: 9 out of 10 nifty engineers

Dungeons and PvE

This is probably the biggest gripe I have with the game. Although I have not yet seen all of them, the dungeons the game offers so far (level 40 at the moment) are too short, too lazy in their design and utterly unrewarding. Drop rates are too low regarding the fact that you level them out pretty fast. The boss encounters themselves are not too uninteresting but this is pretty much all you get. One room, a couple of trash mobs and one boss. Still you have to run them over and over again to collect every piece of gear in all grades for that stupid collection book. The RNG is straight out of hell. Not only that you have RNG on the piece you might or might not get and the grade, you have RNG rolls on the secondary stats and the value of the stats themselves. This is way too much RNG, guys. Here are some ideas:

Make gear bind on equip and not bind on pickup so it can be at least traded on the auction house.

Raise the dungeon entries in the star blessing or make the low level dungeons even unlimited.

Sell tickets for dungeons in the token shops.

Offer regrade scrolls, stat reroll scrolls or tempering items to raise the item level so even a bad drop can develop into a good piece.

Overall not a too bad experience, but it's just not fun to run stupid unchallenging chores for a small chance of decent gear over and over again. Also since we all enjoy being competitive, relying too much on RNG takes the fun out of PvP.

Rating: 4 out of 10 lottery tickets

Cash Shop

Wow, if we get the cash shop in our version like this one in the SEA beta, we are golden. This is probably the fairest payment model I have seen in a long time. Most of the items can be acquired ingame, the more controversial ones are limited to 100 purchases per account anyway (at least it says so) and considering the fact that you even get rubies by just playing the game (which I hope is not only a beta thing), you can even acquire even the more expensive stuff like pets over time. You are still free to load some coin into the shop but are by no means so nudged towards like in other games. The only thing I would enjoy to see is combining the various premium benefits into two with a fair price, one with and one without the battle pass in case you just don't care for cosmetics.

Kakao Games, please don't fcuk this up!

Rating: 9 out of 10 fair payment models

Final Verdict

A:IR is a polished, beautiful looking, well optimized but gameplay wise only decent MMO that has the potential to be even great. I would strongly suggest that you still do some tweaks for the EU and NA release to make the gear grind more bearable and less of a lottery, and PLEASE stick to the beta payment model. If the grind stays like this and gets an aggressive monetary treatment on top, the game will crash and burn. Otherwise it could be an enjoyable and long living experience. It's in your hands now!